Latest Comments on Science and Academia
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Should you get a Doctor (Ph.D.) title?
Yes, if it does for you what you want to get out of it. Reasons for doctoral research So what does doctoral research leading to a dissertation and the title give you? Reason 1: The title itself You want the title to improve your chances of getting a seat even if the restaurant is full…
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A short note on what is intelligence
A fried of mine asked “what is intelligence” on LinkedIn, linking it to being alive and wondering where “artificial intelligence” is on this spectrum. For my own record, without further ado, my take: Artificial intelligence (AI) is a misnomer, because it is not intelligence as we have it in humans. The behavior we observe in…
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Student language skills with and without AI
The message on the left came in through Moodle, the message on the right one minute later through email. I’m happy to report our students know how to use AIs.
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Cultural slapstick with students
Student, via email: Could you please approve these study-abroad courses for my degree? (We have a process for this that I expect students to use; direct email is not the way to go.) Me: Who sent you my way to approve these? They: I’m so sorry, I didn’t intend to bother you. I will find…
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Glucose on the web service
As a professor, I’m apparently increasingly communicating not with students, but with bots representing students. The following communication ensued after I failed a student for my research class, because they hadn’t submitted any of the required homework. Student: “I have submitted all the method exercises on time, but my final grade is fail.” Me: “There…
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Why would anyone complain about penalizing research papers that have fake citations?
Arxiv, the popular preprint server, recently decided to penalize submitters of articles that contain non-existing references, presumably hallucinated by an AI. All authors will be sent to the doghouse, not just the first author. They’ll be blocked for a year from submitting new articles and will have their whole history reviewed, among other sanctions. While…